


Call Me Friend, But Keep Me Closer

by tackytiger



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Cheating, Infidelity, M/M, Moral Ambiguity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-16
Updated: 2019-02-16
Packaged: 2019-10-29 13:02:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17808461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tackytiger/pseuds/tackytiger
Summary: "Neville Longbottom had always loved plants, but he loved Harry Potter more."





	Call Me Friend, But Keep Me Closer

**Author's Note:**

> Title is taken from "when the party's over" by Billiie Eilish.

Neville Longbottom had always loved plants. Since the war, he had become known as many things - he was Almost-The-Boy-Who-Lived; he was 6'4"; he had cut the head off a giant murderous snake with the Sword of Gryffindor; he was Herbology Professor at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. In his heart, though, he knew he was a gardener.

He had lived through a war, and through too many deaths, and a year at Hogwarts with the Carrows. After it was all done – Harry dazed and panting in the rubble, Voldemort a puff of ash on the breeze, Nagini coiled cold at Neville’s feet - Neville stood on the cracked and blackened flagstones of the courtyard with snake gore up to the shoulder of his sword arm, and bile down the front of his jumper, and he decided that was quite enough. Plants were safe, and infinitely knowable. They could be documented, studied, and cultivated. Plants could be taken care of, when you knew what you were doing. You _could_ know what you were doing, with plants. Plants grew, inexorable and determined. Plants were shelter. Plants were food. Plants persisted.

Neville Longbottom had always loved plants, but he loved Harry Potter more.

* * *

**PRESENT DAY**

Neville arrives home unexpectedly in the middle of Valentine’s Day, holding his newest hybridized Magimuggle plant – a philodendron/ moly cross which he had perfected for use in a modified Felix Felicis. The heart-shaped leaves gleam almost black against the tenderest of white flowers. Nev has been working on this for so long – months of research, months of managing the delicate process of cross-pollination, months of breathlessly detailing the processs to Harry over dinner or in bed, months of watching and waiting for the buds to emerge. It feels like hope in a pot, and today Neville needs hope. 

It isn’t that things aren’t going well with Harry, exactly – yes, Harry is away a lot with work, and they’re not in the honeymoon period anymore, but they’re happy. They’ve built a quiet and tender sort of life together. Neville is used to being patient, to waiting for things to flower in their own time. But after a year and a half in the wilderness that is loving the untameable Harry Potter, Neville wants to feel safe.

It’s just that Neville wants more of what they already have. He wants them to go to the annual Battle of Hogwarts Anniversary Ball together, to stand for the press photos beside Harry with their matching Order of Merlin medals shining in the candle-light, to be part of a pair rather than the awkward bookend beside the Golden Trio. 

He wants Harry to move into their bedroom properly, not just to sleep there while keeping his stuff in Neville’s spare room. He wants Harry to share more of his life with Neville – wants Harry to write his work trips on the kitchen calendar, and to tell Nev about them before he leaves, instead of letting Nev Floo home to a dark kitchen and Harry’s toothbrush gone and his winter-weight robes missing from the coatstand in the hall. 

He wants to know where Harry is, and how he is, instead of just…holding on for him to come back. He doesn’t want to be surprised by Harry in his bed, sleep-drunk and languorous and smelling tart and ozoney from a Transatlantic portkey. He doesn’t want to run into Harry and Ron coming out of The Leaky, with Harry Firewhiskey-flushed and listing dangerously despite Ron’s arm around his waist, to find out that Harry has actually been back for two days but had ‘just popped in’ to see the Granger-Weasleys before heading home. He definitely doesn’t want a repeat of that one memorable occasion of a firecall from Malfoy via the public Floo at St Mungo’s – having to see Harry blinking and dazed from the after-effects of an explosive curse, and Malfoy hovering milk-white and pinched with worry at his bedside, in the place where Neville should have been.

Harry isn’t much of a one for anniversaries – he had told Neville once that all the anniversaries he’d ever known stood for loss. But Nev thought that there could be no harm in doing this on Valentine’s Day, two years after their first night together. Even if Harry didn’t recognise the date, Neville likes the symbolism. A good day for a declaration of love, he thinks. 

* * *

**TWO YEARS BEFORE**

Valentine’s Day was always a wash-out, Neville thought glumly. He knew he wasn’t supposed to care about a fake feast day that promoted heteronormative values and an overvaluation of romantic relationships. And he was out with his friends, all of them bright-eyed from booze and fiercely affectionate, with barely a shadow of the war lingering behind their smiles. The whole eighth year gang was there, and Neville supposed that it really was fun, and great to feel so close to everyone still, five years into the real world. It was just…it had been almost a month since Harry Potter had kissed him outside the bathroom of the Hog’s Head, his mouth a hot, speculative slide against Neville’s and his fingers splayed just the right side of too-tight over Neville’s jaw. Neville had felt rather than heard Harry laugh at the embarrassingly needy noise that Nev made as he chased Harry’s mouth, before Harry had almost absent-mindedly pulled away and stroked his thumb over Nev’s cheekbone. Then he was smiling that blazing I-Saved-The-World smile and telling Nev he needed to take a slash, and he’d catch up with him later, yeah? And more than three weeks and four nights out later, and Nev was still waiting to see where that kiss could have gone. 

And tonight it was going nowhere fast, judging by the intent, hungry look on the face of the man who was being smiled at by Harry in the queue for the bar, and Nev couldn’t blame him for it. He knew what it felt like to be on the receiving end of that smile.  
He should have known better than to hope, he reminded himself. But though he understood that Harry needed to feel free, it didn’t mean that he had to torture himself by watching Harry explore that freedom through the medium of frequent and enthusiastic rubbing up of himself against strangers on the edge of the dancefloor.

Sighing, Nev set his empty glass down and began to wind his way through the crowd towards the Floobank, before his path was blocked by Pansy Parkinson, and obviously there was no skirting a gang of drunk Slytherins who wanted to dance. Nev shrugged and allowed his body to slide into the rhythm, the dark pulse of the bass propelling him straight into the centre of the group and also straight into a writhing and sweat-soaked Draco Malfoy. Malfoy was unearthly in the shifting lights, uncharacteristically rumpled, with his head thrown back and arms bared and a slice of stomach (that Neville suddenly really wanted to lick) gleaming above the waistband of his jeans. 

It wasn’t like Nev fancied him, really – he was still Malfoy after all, and more often than not a colossal dickhead - but Nev had eyes. Malfoy was fit as fuck and clearly on something judging by his blown-out pupils. He was dancing slowly, watching Neville watching him, and his blissed-out smile sharpened a little as he moved closer and slid his thigh in between both of Nev’s. When Neville took him by the waist and spun him, Malfoy turned as sweetly and cleanly as a key in a lock to fit himself back to chest against Neville. He moved easily in the circle of Neville’s arms, and though he looked like an angel, up close he felt supple and heat-slick and real. Nev had just shut his eyes and allowed himself to slide an arm across Malfoy’s stomach, when he felt the fizz and crackle of magic wash over him. 

He opened his eyes, Malfoy still held firm against him, and saw Harry standing in front of them. He must have moved fast, judging by the bewildered look on the face of the guy who was still standing, blinking, at the bar. Harry’s face was relaxed and his hands were in his pockets as he rocked a little on the balls of his feet, but his magic was a ferocious blast of heat and electricity around the three of them. He nodded politely in greeting at Malfoy, and Malfoy was tense as a strung bow under Nev’s arm as he sneered, “Potter”. Which was weird really, because Harry and Malfoy were friends now – best friends, probably, and had been for so long that people had forgotten that it should be strange. And they were colleagues, having started up their own international curse-breaking service, and they went away on work trips together and ate dinner together and Harry had been best man at Malfoy’s wedding, for Merlin’s sake. Neville had just seen them earlier that evening, laughing and scuffling and muttering in each other’s ears at the bar as they steadily worked their way through four Jaegerbombs each. 

But now Harry’s eyes were too bright and cool as he asked Malfoy, “Astoria not out tonight, then?”. Which was weird too because Astoria was never there, it was well-known that her marriage to Malfoy was one of mutual convenience in order to keep the entail going on Malfoy Manor. 

“Fuck off, Potter. Astoria knows how this works - as does Longbottom, apparently." But even as he said it, Malfoy was twisting out of Neville’s grasp and shouldering Harry out of his way to get back to the Slytherins. Harry watched him go, gaze carefully blank, before turning back to Neville and raising his eyebrows. And all of a sudden, with a fierce rush of joy coursing through him, Nev realised that Harry was jealous, and he could only swallow and nod as the fire of Harry’s magic drew him in and gathered him up. _He wants me_ , he thought, as the club disappeared and they fell with a crack into Harry’s bedroom in Grimmauld Place.

* * *

**PRESENT DAY**

Neville wrinkles his nose as he slips in the back door of the house he shares with Harry. There’s a cloak chucked on the floor by the kitchen counter, and Nev sighs as he picks it up and folds it over a chair. It has to be Malfoy’s – who else would even wear such a posh wanker cloak (which he’s had trimmed in Slytherin green even though they left school seven years ago because he’s a massive twat), let alone be so careless with something so expensive. 

He doesn’t really mind Malfoy anymore – he’s alright when he wants to be, in fact. He can talk Harry down from some of his more exuberant impulses, he’s the only one who can handle maudlin Harry when he drinks too much every Halloween night and tries to fly to Godric’s Hollow. He’s just come into his inheritance – the condition being that he reach his fifth wedding anniversary, as per his pureblood twat family’s inheritance rites - and the first thing he did was donate Malfoy Manor to the Ministry. And Nev is on the administrative Board at Hogwarts, so he’s seen the size of the donations Malfoy has made from his private vaults to the school’s Squib Liaison and Training fund. He’s still naturally sneery and sharp-tongued, though, and he and Harry spend far too much time drinking and making a ruckus in Muggle clubs, and he’s definitely going to get in the way of Neville’s plans for the day.

Nev can smell stale smoke, even though Harry had promised he’d stop smoking in the house, and there are four cigarette butts stubbed out in soil of Neville’s big herb pot, even though there’s an ashtray just there on the windowsill and they’re bloody wizards, for fuck’s sake - it would have barely taken a wandless Accio to grab it, which Harry could do in his sleep. 

Now he thinks about it, it’s a bit odd that Malfoy is here because he doesn’t tend to visit Neville’s house (Neville and Harry’s house, his brain corrects guiltily). He had turned up with Astoria once, for a distinctly awkward dinner, and Malfoy and Harry had proceeded to get uproariously drunk before they’d even served the main course, and then Malfoy put his elbow in the pudding during an interminable shouting match with Harry about some obscure Quidditch tactics. The evening ended with Harry and Draco cackling and weaving around the garden on Harry’s broom, while Neville escorted Astoria to the Floo and politely waved her home with the leftover, slightly squashed Pavlova.

In fact, there’s something distinctly off about the whole situation, and the feeling intensifies when Nev slips into the corridor and finds two half-drunk glasses of wine, one on the hall table and the other lying on the floor, its spill spreading blood-dark and shocking on Neville’s gran’s handwoven runner.

He supposes the war will never leave him. The instinct to fight takes over as that creeping feeling of dread solidifies in his chest, and he carefully sets his plant down and palms his wand. He’s already in stockinged feet, because he takes his shoes off at the door like a civilised person, unlike some Boys Who Lived he could mention, so it’s a matter of quiet seconds to creep down to the half-open sitting room door.

He wonders, later, how he didn’t guess straight away from the noises alone. He hears them before he sees them, the softest of half-caught gasps and suddenly, shockingly, the unmistakeable slick sound of mouths meeting and parting and meeting again.

Later, he’ll tell himself that it was the shock that held him captive outside the door, listening. He can see them too, now, as he presses himself against the door jamb. They must have been kissing for quite a while - their mouths are swollen and both their throats look scraped and raw from stubble burn. They’re drawing apart by the time Neville brings himself to look through the crack in the door. Harry is leaning against the wall beside the fireplace. He’s trembling, actually shaking from head to toe, as Malfoy traces the line of his throat with a thumb. 

Malfoy is speaking, still barely touching Harry, and though his voice is pitched low and expressionless, he’s looking at Harry with such intensity that Neville feels suddenly and infuriatingly like the intruder here. 

“Potter, Potter – did you hear what I said? It’s time. She’s happy to finish things up now, and the vaults are secure. I’m done”. Harry’s face was doing something very complicated, moving through a range of emotions before settling into something so open and tender and hopeful that it makes Nev take a step back. 

“Malfoy…you’re saying….we’re going to…?” Harry’s stuttering now, his mouth working over the words as if he’s not sure himself what’s going to come out. 

Whatever questions he’s asking, he must see the answers in Malfoy’s face, because he’s moving now, spinning forward to slam Malfoy back against the wall in one swift, hungry move. If he wasn’t sure before, Neville knows now that this is not their first kiss. They’re navigating each other’s bodies with an easy, gentle familiarity, and through the haze of hurt, Neville can register how beautiful they are together. Harry’s always had to look up at Nev, but he and Malfoy are eye-to-eye and chest-to-chest and thigh-to-thigh. They’ve already picked up each other’s rhythm as they gasp into each other’s mouth, hips rolling steadily. The smooth muscles of Harry’s back are bunching and flexing where Malfoy’s shoved his shirt up, and Nev can’t see what Harry’s doing with his hand but it’s making Malfoy groan as though he hurts.

Harry has his teeth on Malfoy’s throat now, nipping hard and chasing with his tongue, and all the time he’s talking to Malfoy, his voice amused and fond and very at odds with the obscene-looking thrust and curl of his hips. 

“You’re telling me you’ve just decided, finally, after all this time, that we’re doing this properly?” he mutters. “And that’s it, is it? Arrogant twat”.

Malfoy is smiling properly now, face soft and eyes crinkled in amusement. “You weren’t expecting me to get down on one knee, were you, Potter?” There’s a beat of silence, and Neville just has time to register the implication of the words as his grief rises up in his chest, and the two of them are just standing there, grinning at each other. And then Malfoy’s saying, “Alright, Mr Malfoy-Potter, I’ll get on my knees for you”, and Harry’s tugging at him and still laughing. “No time, Potter-Malfoy – just get inside me for fuck’s sake. I can still feel you from last night”. 

And that’s it for Neville, because first off Harry never bottoms which means Nev always has to, and he didn’t mind as such until this moment of realisation that it was just that Harry never bottoms _for Neville_. And also, last night Harry was supposed to be at Quidditch (and maybe he was, because Malfoy’s on the team too, Neville’s brain supplies helpfully) and he was home, windswept and pink-cheeked, with a takeaway, by 9.30pm.

And Neville is fucked if he’s going to let Malfoy shag Harry up against the wall in Neville’s sitting room, and before he even thinks about it, he’s slamming through the door with such force that they both spring apart, and Malfoy’s wand arm is moving in a vicious-looking arc before they realise that it’s Neville, and Harry deflects the hex with an absent-minded gesture.

There’s a moment, then, where they just stare at each other. Neville allows himself a brief, hate-filled glance at Malfoy, before he turns to Harry, saying, “Get out of my house, Malfoy”. Harry is sheepish, thumbing awkwardly at a mottled, fresh bruise on his clavicle, but his shoulders are down and his expression clear. 

Malfoy has obviously decided to brazen things out, because he lingers over buttoning up his shirt – and how can he make getting dressed seem so lascivious, Nev wonders savagely. Then he slowly and deliberately presses his thumb to his lower lip, which is swollen and stained a louche blackish purple from the wine. He looks well-used. 

Malfoy starts in. “Longbottom – Neville – I’m presuming you saw at least some of that, so let’s not beat around the bush. I’ll leave, but I’m not going without Potter."

Neville actually laughs at that, despite feeling like the earlier sight of Harry with his hand buried in Malfoy’s hair has stripped him of any capacity for joy. 

“I did actually see a good bit of you with your hands down my boyfriend’s pants in our sitting room, Malfoy. But I’m telling you to get out so that I can talk to him about it without having to see anymore of you than I already have. So fuck off."

Harry twitches at that, and for the first time he starts to look guilty. “Nev – look, I’m so sorry that you had to find out like this. I know you and I have had a bit of a thing going recently. I didn’t actually realise we were…well, I know we’ve always been great friends, and now we’re flatmates too, and…” He trails off at this point, possibly noticing the incredulous outrage on Neville’s face.

“Flatmates? Harry, you absolute fucker. You’ve been living here for nearly two years. I can’t remember the last time you slept in the other bed. You _sucked me off_ on that couch just last night. How are you not my boyfriend?”

“You sucked him off last night?” Malfoy is looking irritated and a bit pink around the ears, and Neville sees Harry’s hand twitch towards Malfoy as though he wants to soothe him. All of Neville’s hurt liquefies into a flood of rage, like his blood is pulsing with the fury of it, and in the space of an inbreath he finds himself standing with his wand nudging at the soft flesh under Harry’s left ear. He has Malfoy pinned hard against the wall, his hand at Malfoy’s throat, thumb pressing on the delicate ridge of his Adam’s apple.

The room is so silent that he can hear as well as feel when Malfoy swallows. “Now there’s the guy who took the head off that fucking snake,” he says approvingly. "Now I know what you saw in him, Potter."  
The tension leaches out of Malfoy as he relaxes into Neville’s grasp, and he feels the vulgar cant of Malfoy’s hips and the slight hitch of his breathing. Suddenly, all Neville can look at is the smooth column of Malfoy’s pale throat, as Malfoy’s eyes slide heavy-lidded and appraising down Neville’s body.

For a heartbeat, Neville thinks about what it would be like to be the kind of man who could just take in return from the person who had already stolen so much from him. He imagines the heft of Malfoy under his hands, the way Nev could just open him up, and he must make a move forward because all of a sudden Harry is right there between them, knocking Neville’s hand away. He’s cold as stone, face shuttered, vibrating with real rage, and he barely glances back over his shoulder as he says, “For fuck’s sake, Malfoy, give it a rest.”

Malfoy preens then, eyes alight with mischievous glee, and his voice is glib. “Don’t worry, Potter, you’re still my number one.” 

Harry snorts at that, and then the two of them are laughing aloud, so hard they stagger into each other and have to steady themselves. Nev stares at them in bewilderment, wondering how they can laugh while making rubble of the life he’s built.

“I don’t understand,” he groans. “You don’t even call each other by your first names. How can you possibly talk about leaving me and marrying him? How do you know you won’t kill each other within a week?”

Harry is utterly serious now. “Nev, you must understand. I’m not throwing you over for a shag. Malfoy and I have been on-and-off since eighth year.” – “More on than off,” Malfoy interjects smugly – “Shut up, Malfoy – Nev, he’s it for me, always has been. Everything we’ve done, every secret we’ve kept, has been to secure Malfoy’s inheritance so we can be free of his past. We’ve been waiting for a long time. He’s more than Lucius Malfoy’s son, now, his name is his own again. And we can just fuck off and do whatever we want.”

“And I will always call him Potter. No one else does, these days. We are still what we’ve always been to each other. And on that note – Potter, let’s go.”

Nev is blinking back tears now, he’s always been quick to cry and he scrubs at his face furiously with the back of his hand. On and off since school, and he never even saw it. All those work trips away. All the nights out, all the cigarettes they slipped off to smoke together. He thinks of them at Theo’s wedding, sniggering and whispering as Theo fumbled his way through a heartfelt speech to his new wife. He remembers how pissed off he’d been at the time, wondering why Harry had to always be so fucking rude at public events, wondering why they wouldn’t sheath the blade of their contempt for once. He remembers his gran sniffing disapprovingly while telling him he had always had stars in his eyes for Harry Potter. Perhaps the light had made him blind.

They’re moving now, getting ready to leave. Malfoy slides his hand down the inside of Harry’s wrist, the whisper of skin on skin a final insult. Harry looks apologetic, and it all feels faintly ridiculous now. Malfoy stops in front of Neville, and places his hand gently on Nev’s shoulder.

“For what it’s worth, Longbottom, I really am sorry. I know how hard it is to be in love with Harry Potter.” And then, because he’s Malfoy and can’t seem to help himself being an enormous fucking bellend, he adds, “the difference is that he’s never not loved me back.”

Neville learned patience and found peace among his plants, in the nudge and slide of fingers through soil, and in the slow unfurling of tender new buds. As he sits in his silent house, he feels the pulse of his magic reaching out to all the fresh growing things that surround him. His magic thrums through the leaves, pushing back against the imperceptible motion of their growth. He thinks of how sometimes a garden needs to be razed and fired in order to tame bad growth.

Mouth set, he gets ready to Floo to the Leaky. He takes his fullest coin purse, and his wand hand tingles. It’s likely to be a long night.

In the flurry of his departure, the dessicated, browned husks of vegetation sigh and settle into dust.

**Author's Note:**

> No matter what I do, I cannot format the link to my Tumblr. But if you liked the fic, please do come and say hello on there. I'm @tackytigerfic there.
> 
>  Say hi on Tumblr!


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